To Infinity & Us

the screenshots here are from near the end of the interview, which i think makes it even worse, because the interviewer listened to everything he’d said and still didn’t treat it very seriously. there are other parts where she seems very smart and intuitive, but then other times he’d say something like “i hate myself to death and feel like i’m an empty shell” and she’d just laugh and move on while i’m just like !!!

i was really impressed by how open he is about it though, even the “ugly” symptoms that aren’t really talked about normally — like how he said he used to lock himself in his apartment alone and drink and “bang on the walls” because he didn’t know how else to cope with all the pain he was in, and he even mentions hurting himself and talks about scars and refers to himself as a “masochist” and says a coworker once referred to him as “someone constantly trying to hurt himself.” the fact that he was able to talk about all this so openly, despite the reaction he got, was so impressive and amazing to me

speakng of raising awareness: the movie he’s being interviewed for here is “silenced”, a film he initiated production of. it’s based on real events that happened at a school for deaf children, where kids were sexually abused for years by their teachers. of the six rapists, two received prison sentences (and were out within a year), while the others were freed immediately because the statute of limitations had expired - and all were reinstated at the school

gong yoo read about this a few years later and said to himself “what can i as an actor do to help,” and he made a movie about it. millions of people saw it and there was mass public outrage, and because of this movie the case was reopened, the school was shut down, the rapists got much harsher punishments, and a law named after the movie was passed that abolished the statute of limitations for all sex crimes against minors and disabled people

when they were making the movie, gong yoo was convinced by the director he’d found to star as a teacher who tries to help the victims, but at first he was hesitant (because before this he’d only been in romcoms and he thought he lacked the acting ability to pull off the emotional depth required for this subject) but he eventually agreed because he wanted to use his fame to bring attention to the events

“Beauty is about accepting yourself for who you are. I believe we were all made a certain way for a reason and living life is just about figuring out what to do with it. Society now places a huge weight on looking “perfect” and I’ve seen people tear themselves apart striving for it, including myself. But when you figure out that none of it matters, life becomes a billion times better.” - Amber Liu